YouTube Shorts Originality Update: What Creators Need to Know
YouTube Shorts now prioritizes original content in recommendations. Here’s what the update means for your channel and what still affects your views.
Shorts can be a great tool to bring new viewers into your channel and even convert them into long-form viewers. The bite-size content brings out different ways to be creative.
With YouTube pushing for Shorts series/shows, they really want creators to bring their unique storytelling to both mobile and the big screen.
It's why they're redesigning their recommendation systems to prioritize original content on Shorts.
If you've ever perused the Shorts feed, you've most likely seen dozens of re-uploaded Shorts in the form of compilations or uploads from channels that stole it from another platform (or even from another channel on YouTube). You might also see channels dedicated to posting fan clips of their favorite creators.
And at the bottom of it all are millions of AI-slop that never seems to end.
YouTube's attempt to combat these sort of content came during their updated Spam policy. Now they're making sure the recommendations are focused on the unique you and not a carbon copy.
What does YouTube's Shorts prioritization on originality means for you?
If all you do on your channel is re-upload other creators' video without any significant changes... YouTube will less likely distribute your video into the Shorts feed.
YouTube wants you to add what they consider "real value" through your own original commentary, unique edits, or storytelling. Just saying aloud what the clip is about won't cut it.
Here's what you shouldn't expect:
- The new prioritization won't be immediately effective (and especially if you're reading this when the update was new). You'll still see unoriginal videos being pushed simply because they've garnered an audience
- This doesn't mean your video will automatically get a big boost because it's original.
Everything else still matters in whether YouTube will recommend your Shorts or not (i.e. the content itself and whether it provides viewer satisfaction). You still need to work and improve on your content creation skill, whether that's improving your watch time, CTR, titles and SEO, etc.
So don't look at this update and assume that you don't have to do anything to rake in views. Because if your Shorts weren't getting views before, there's a chance it still won't if you haven't made any improvements or changes.
Why is YouTube making this update on Shorts prioritization?
As we mentioned in the beginning with YouTube allowing creators add Shorts in a Show playlist, they want more creators to play around with bite-sized storytellings.
They also know that people have been complaining ever since Shorts was a thing about the slop that surround this type of media.
This is their way to encourage creators and their original content, while pushing down the slop content.
The question is whether this will actually help in the long-run, because YouTube uses AI to sift through the million of content uploaded every day. And AI isn't always great at finding what it should be looking for. There will be false positives, unfortunately.
What you can do about that is if your content is struck incorrectly, you need to contact YouTube about this and provide feedback whenever possible.
What is YouTube's Spam policy?
In this prioritization update, YouTube says it aligns with their existing Spam policy. If you check their policy, you'll see that scraped content is a part of it.
Re-posting material from other platforms without adding anything of your own is considered scraped content.
If you're interested in learning more about YouTube's Spam policy, read more below 👇
Ike
Violating YouTube's policies may result in your monetization being suspended or your channel terminated.
For some violations, YouTube may remove the content and issue a warning or a strike. If this happens, you'll always get an email from YouTube notifying you of the reason.
If you get three strikes within 90 days, your channel is subjected to termination.
Though YouTube is currently working on a couple new ways to help you avoid channel termination.
What are you thoughts on this update? Let us know in the Discord server!
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